Meditation Monday - Getting Ready for Lent
Finding Beauty in the Ashes of Lent.
It’s time to get ready for Lent. I have been thinking about that a lot over the weekend, and wondering how I can make this season fresh and new.
Lent is a time to reflect, re-examine and renew. It is a season that beckons us into prayer and closeness to God so that we can prepare ourselves for the joy that comes with Easter and the wonder of living into God’s eternal world of love. It seems to me that we have never needed this season more than we do this year and I want to make sure that I make the most of it.
As I prayed and reflected on this over the weekend, the words that came to me were “search for the hidden beauty”. There is a lot of ugliness in the world at the moment - the ugliness of hate and violence towards those who are different from us, the ugliness of destruction from floods and wildfires, the ugliness of poverty and suffering, the ugliness of war, and the ugliness of the destruction of creation - and in the midst of this ugliness I want to know how to find beauty and how to bring that beauty into the lives of those around me.
As I thought about this, I was reminded of a retreat Lilly Lewin and I conducted a couple of years ago Finding Beauty in the Ashes of Lent .
In preparation for the retreat I read John O’Donohue’s book Beauty and pulled it out again yesterday. His words are so compelling.
If our style of looking becomes beautiful, then beauty will become visible and shine forth for us…. When we beautify our gaze, the grace of hidden beauty becomes our joy and our sanctuary. (Beauty, 19)
When beauty touches our lives, the moment becomes luminous. Theses grace-moments are gifts that surprise us. When we look beyond the moment to our life journey, perhaps we can choose a new rhythm of journeying which would be more conscious of beauty and more open to inviting her to disclose herself to us in all the situations we travel through (Beauty, 23)
What a wonderful focus for Lent I thought. How do I beautify my gaze so that the ugliness and the ashes of this world are transformed and become beautiful?
The journey of Lent was meant to focus on resurrection life, but for most, it now focuses more on sacrifice and death, often with little expectation of ongoing change in our lives. The focus has moved from Easter Sunday to Good Friday and our entering into Christ’s crucifixion and death.
So how do we invite the spirit of God into that creative process? We need to bring about transformation so that we can enter the resurrected life of Easter?
Rethink My Sacred Space
First I need to rethink my sacred space so that it focuses on beauty and life rather than on ugliness and death. It is this space that renews me each morning and equips me to walk out into the day with a desire to bring life and transformation on. I am not sure what it will become in the next couple of weeks but I am excited by the challenge it presents me with.
Give Free Reign to Creativity.
Second I need to think about practices that focus on creativity and beauty.
By now, most of you realize that I am a strong advocate for free form creative practices like doodling, walking a finger labyrinth, and painting on rocks. Even crafts like knitting and woodworking can spur creativity and improve our problem solving ability. Consider setting aside time for one of these practices each week during Lent. Perhaps you would like to knit a prayer shawl or craft a toy for a disabled kid you know. Such practices are guaranteed to inspire new creative spiritual practices too.
One of the creative practices we used during our Finding Beauty in the Ashes of Lent retreat was using the ashes of burnt masks during COVID to make artwork. This was inspired by the Karen Lynn Ingalls whose studio was destroyed in the 2017 California wildfires. She has since created art from the ashes of burnt paintings found in the rubble of her studio. I read this week about other artists who doing something similar with the ashes of the recent fires. Literally taking the ashes of Lent and making them into artwork is an inspiring practice that convinces me that we can all create beauty out of the ashes of suffering and despair in our world.
Get Out and Have Some Fun
We all need to play. Making a mess, getting dirty, colouring, playing sports, are all rejuvenating practices that free us from inflexible thought patterns and routines. In our hectic, modern lives, many of us focus so heavily on work and family commitments that we never have time for pure fun. Just because we’re adults, doesn’t mean we have to take ourselves so seriously and make life all about work.
Perhaps Lent is a time to let go of control over what we do and hand the plan of celebrations over to our kids. I mentioned in my last year’s post Five Ways to Foster Creativity In Kids During Lent, how meaningful it was to give five-year-old Catie control of creativity for Easter. We underestimate the creativity of kids and their ability to shape their practices as well as our own.
This year I will engage in several fun projects during Lent. Each of these will I believe increase my commitment to God’s kingdom purposes - hospitality, love of creation and concern for the marginalized. First I have signed up for Kendall Vanderslice’s Lent Sourdough Retreat . I think that this will provide a combination of fun and deep spiritual reflection for me.
Second I have signed up for a nature art course - Watercolouring Urban Critters, which is very much in keeping with my emphasis on nature journalling as part of my “fallow season”. I am excited but rather nervous about this as I have never done any watercolour painting before. Stepping out into something new seems like a great idea for Lent though. and I am sure that it will refresh and renew me so that I am better able to enter into the work of God’s kingdom more effectively.
Third I plan to study the Beatitudes throughout the season - still researching the best books to guide my journey so if you have any suggestions let me know.
Get Out and Take Notice.
Over the last few years, I have been encouraged by fellow journeyers to get out and take notice of my neighbourhood, God’s creation and the people who populate it. I have learned to take the practices of Lectio divina and Visio divina, out into the world around me. I love exploring the neighbourhood graffiti, murals and garden art. I love observing the people Tom and I pass as we walk and taking notice of the new plants emerging and the migratory birds on the lake. This has freed my spirit to listen deeply and observe all that happens around me, inspiring me to incorporate new practices into my spiritual life in ways I could never have imagined even five years ago.
These awe and wonder walks as I call them will be another important Lenten discipline for me. I am currently reading Awestruck: How Embracing Wonder Can Make You Happier, Healthier and More Connected by Jonah Paquette. He comments that awe helps to spur kindness and generosity even among strangers and goes on to say that “awe’s ability to increase compassion and altruism appears to be one of the core reasons for its prominent place in our emotional repertoire.”
Experiences of awe increase our ability to reach out with compassion and care to those around us. No wonder it is a great practice for the season of Lent.
Focus on Life Not Death.
As you get ready for Lent, are you hungering for life or death? Are your potential practices focused on the cross or the kingdom? How would it change our Lenten practices if our goal was resurrection living rather then Cross walking? Lent is a time to daydream, to imagine new possibilities for the in-breaking of God’s new world.
What are the aspects of God’s longed-for new world that gnaws at your heart, making you want to respond? Read through these inspiring words from Isaiah 65:17-25. This is one of my favourite passages of inspiration and hope about the kingdom of God. I read it frequently as a way to keep myself focused on God’s purposes not just for me but for the entire creation.
Lent has become a popular practice for people of all Christian traditions in the last few years. I hope that you will consider observing it this year and walk with us into God’s kingdom ways.
Let me end with a prayer I wrote a couple of years ago for Ash Wednesday:
Our world is filled with ashes,
Not just on our foreheads,
But in our mouths.
The horrors of war surround us,
The calls of the innocent
Cry out for justice.
Let us find hope
Hidden in the ashes.
We can create the beauty
We wish to see in the world.
Newness does push up through the cracks.
Beauty will emerge from our grief.
Light will shine in the darkness.
Let us not ask after power but for justice.
Let us not incite war but peace.
Let us follow Jesus into the wilderness,
Beautify our gaze,
And embark together on a journey
Of renewal and transformation.
(c) Christine Sine.
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